The Woods

I came across this song recently and found that it really hit home, strongly bringing up the feeling that there is something fundamental to this whole mess where I can rest.  It brought tears to my eyes when I first saw this video:

The retreat was very good. Silent periods, silent rapport sittings, participant led sessions, Art and Paul led sessions, and talking until 3am at the fire. I got a huge number of insights and felt after the first day this week had been productive if nothing else happens.

Insights:
My 3 main moods are: 1. an insecure mood I spend the most time in, 2. a very insecure mood I was in that first session Sunday night, 3. a pity/despair mood which is usually, to always, a reaction to tension.
My 4 secondary moods are: 1. Ego boost, which can come from surprising positive feedback from life, 2. spiritual/existential longing, 3. awakeness, 4. an inspired/courageous mood.
Self knowledge is the question. That is: this is my experience, whose experience is it? Dan is the experience.
Two of Shawn’s poems seemed like things I could see so that, “unexpectedly close,” “closer than close,” made possible sense for a moment.

I committed to 30 minutes/day reviewing notes slowly for the next three weeks.

Feedback I got:
– I am happier
– am I too comfortable?
– happier/less weighty
– only awake sometimes – maybe I should work on this (?)
– lighter
– not sureing I’d dave right under the surface (?)
– I should consider studying my dreams. The one I shared for our dreamwork session was a good one
– not having one clear goal for the retreat but rather several goals is “shotgun” approach rather than “rifle” approach
– being not present, spending time in my head
– stoic, able to persist

My mood is pretty influenced by our first day of a week long retreat. Just a little confrontation sends me into a strong self-pity mood. I get convinced I’m totally stuck, a drain on the other seekers who get it, and I wish I could quit but I can’t, or at least crawl in a hole and stop participating in life until it becomes reasonable, but I can’t.

Before this, my week was decent. Some meditation on what do I want out of life, which could get somewhere. I had a very good conversation with Ben. I feel I’m holding back a little but am also pleasantly surprised to hear someone else taking the search seriously. Had an interesting discussion on Landmark Education – do I know I’m going to die? Also: whether this life is the final dream-within-a-dream or not, doesn’t matter, it’s the same observer. Even if other consciousnesses could be experienced, it’d still be by me, the observer. And finally we discussed, does observation/observing end when observation/observed will end? I assume the latter event will occur with the body’s death (or final dream’s body’s death, as the case may be) but if observation/observing’s source is unknown, there may be room to question this.

High tension returned on Thursday. I eat a lot. I don’t know what is going on but worry it’s not even the final tension. That seeing girls when postering increases it so much it seems unfortunately possible it’s not final – unfortunate because one conviction I’m having is I don’t want to fight life any more, which means I’m ignoring my to-do list and haven’t been able to focus on any of my meditations this week. But this can’t go on.

I did have something good when listening to a podcast summarizing Spinoza’s The Ethics. (4/8/09 @ http://www.learnoutloud.com/Catalog/Philosophy/-/The-Philosophy-Podcast/19669) I wrote on Wednesday “Affected me more than anything else today, though I couldn’t follow the logic, even listening to it multiple times.” This made me stop, rewind and listen again:

“The idea is the first thing which forms the being of the human mind. It must be an idea of an individual thing actually existing. … Man thinks. Modes of thought, such as love, desire, or affections of the mind under whatever designation do not exist unless in the same individual exists an idea of a thing loved, desired, etc. But the idea may exist though no other mode of thinking exists. Therefore the essence of man does not necessarily involve existence.”